'Expose my sons killers,' says Bulger mum

The mother of murdered toddler James Bulger tonight said she wanted the secret identities of killers Jon Venables and Robert Thompson exposed if they are released.

Denise Fergus said she was tired of James's name being "dragged through every court in the land" and wanted photographs taken of his killers if they left custody.

Her plea came as Venables met a parole board which could order his release from custody.

Venables, who attended the hearing at a secret location, could be freed within days if the panel decides he is no longer a risk to the public.

Mrs Fergus, speaking through her spokesman Norman Brennan, said: "It doesn't matter how much the authorities spend trying to protect Venables and Thompson, it will be impossible for them to keep their identities a secret from girlfriends they meet in the future, or drinking friends.

"These people will need to take the first opportunity to ensure that the killers are identified and their photographs are taken."

Protesters launched a demonstration outside the Parole Board's London headquarters in a bid to delay the two killers' widely-expected release.

Demonstrator Roger Costello, from south London, said: "By letting the boys out now, it would be sending the wrong message out to other would-be murderers. They have committed a serious crime and ended up being mollycoddled.

"They have had a better education than if they hadn't committed a crime and now it looks like they are going to be given new identities and a new life with no expense spared."

Robert Thompson, Venables' partner in the February 1993 murder, will attend a separate hearing on Wednesday and is also expected to be freed in the near future.

The Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf effectively ended the boys' tariff - the minimum period they must spend in custody - last October.

He ruled that it would not be beneficial for the boys to spend time in the "corrosive atmosphere" of an adult prison.

The teenagers were also granted an open-ended High Court injunction protecting their anonymity when they are freed from detention with new identities.

Mark Leech, chief executive of national ex-offenders' charity Unlock, is one of the few outsiders to have met Venables and Thompson since their conviction.

He spent time with both killers at separate meetings about three years ago. Mr Leech said: "The time has come for these two young men to be released.

"They have complied with everything the authorities have asked of them, they have tackled their offending behaviour and, having met them, there is no prospect in my view that they will re-offend.

"Nothing that anyone can do will bring James Bulger back, we should allow them now to get on with their lives.

"They did not come across as the ogres that many people make them out to be. They just seemed like normal teenage boys.

"They didn't come across as evil in any sense."

The two killers, who are both 19 in August, have spent their entire detention period in local authority-run secure accommodation. It is likely they will be released into a halfway house rather than given full freedom immediately.

A poll published in the Liverpool Echo today showed the majority of people on Merseyside do not believe Venables and Thompson should be released at present.

Almost 42,000 people responded to a survey published on the front page of the Liverpool Echo newspaper last Thursday which asked: "Do you think Thompson and Venables should be released now?"

Readers voted 5-1 in favour of keeping them in custody.

Mr Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime

Trust, said on Mrs Fergus's behalf: "I do not want revenge, I just want justice.

"I believe the two killers should go to a young offenders' institution for at least three or four years, so they will have experienced some punishment for what they did."